A Clean Slate
by kitticus
Summary: Harry is given the choice to go back and try again. ABANDONED
1. Chapter 1

Harry was looking around himself in horror, watching as the fighting continued in fervour. Voldemort was dead, yet around him, people continued to die. He watched as Ron, who had cheered hollowly at Voldemort's fall, was cut down by Sectumsempra, which seemed to cut through the sky, as the storm worsened. Harry's broken wand lay on the floor beside him, and there was no mental strength behind a wandless protego. Ron bled out.

He watched the Malfoys flee, Narcissa leading her husband and son, flashes of green light following them.

Bellatrix's cackle, pure madness and hatred sounded above everything else. Snape had died by Nagini's venom, and as the massacre continued around him, Harry realised there was no victory.

Only death, and loss, and suffering. Hermione, Ron, Ginny, dead. Fred, gone. Lupin, Mrs Weasely. Fleur a widow, and... his eyes travelled to where she was fighting, blond hair flashing like star and sunlight, a beacon in the rain.

She fell.

So few were left now. On either side.

Hogwarts was gone.

Everything was gone.

Night was dark, lit by spellfire alone. Funny.

In minutes, he would be 21 in minutes, and already he felt life was over.

All light was gone now. He sat down, shuffling away from the body that was all that was left of his lifelong enemy. It was still raining. Cold, cold, cold for July. He leaned a hollow bony cheek against his skeletal knee.

His clothes had seen better days, and he was never hungry anymore, his stomach shrunken beyond what he had once thought the minimum standard for survival.

He stopped shivering.

The desolate scene around him, he closed his eyes, wishing, wishing, wishing that it had all been different.

Until he didn't feel anything anymore.


	2. Chapter 2

He was floating, he realised. And he didn't hurt anymore. But everywhere around him, he could hear crying.

They were lost he realised.

They couldn't go on.

"Too many died too early." A voice said.

Harry spun, looking for Dumbledore. He was sure it had been his voice. No one was there. He could hear all this noise, though!

"And, you, dear boy, among them."

Harry was confused now, and crying, pain was coming back, but he was dead.

He was dead.

There shouldn't be any pain..

"You can go back. But you must choose quickly. The blood magic that your mother used will end when your heart stops pumping."

Harry's head shot up.

"Go back? To when?"

"To when the blood magic was instigated." The voice was urgent.

"I'll know everything."

"Yes."

"I'll do it."

There was no hesitation. To see Hermione and Ron again, and Sirius...

The sensation that followed was like being pulled through the floo, multiple portkeys at once and side-along apparition, to suddenly not be moving at all.

Harry found himself in a horribly familiar place.

"Not Harry, no not Harry!"

A thud as his mother's body hit the floor.

And green light, lots and lots and lots of green light.

And then, Harry started crying. Screaming, wailing and shaking. He crawled awkwardly towards his mother's still warm body, and grieved.


	3. Chapter 3

Unable to communicate with Hagrid, or to think of somewhere to go when he woke on the door step the next morning, Harry fumbled with the letter, thinking he could probably survive a year or two with the Dursleys... but only if he could check what Dumbledore had written. This was the letter that could have explained his heritage when he was a child.

He managed to turn over, finally, his awkward stubby hands difficult to control. It took forever. He wouldn't have even managed to crawl to Mrs Figg's, he realised.

The letter was typical Dumbledore, "unfortunate circumstances have led to your sister and her husband's regrettable deaths, at the hands of a notorious criminal wizard, Voldemort." "I know you will keep you kin safe in these difficult times, until he can return to the wizarding world."

Bloody hell.

It dribbled on. "Harry shall surely be a very talented inquisitive child, and I trust your judgement in letting him know the truth of our world, and the great sacrifice his parents made, not only for him, but for the entire wizarding world."

Gads.

Then odd details. Stuff like how he liked apple puree.

Then the door opened, and Petunia's scream split the air. She grabbed the basket and pulled it in the door roughly, slamming the door just behind.

No doubt trying to avoid letting the neighbourhood see him.

The argument Petunia and Vernon had went over his head, but he knew it was something about having him stay. Dudley hit him. He shuffled out of the way. Hitting back would probably just make things worse.

The next few weeks continued in the same vein. Harry watched the news when Petunia and Vernon did, and slept in a second hand cot in the same room as Dudley and his carved wooden one. Petunia fauned over Dudley, and fed Harry grudgingly. He noted bitterly that Dudley got lots of applesauce, and he never got a drop.

He practised wandless magic constantly, tiring himself out. He could do wingardium leviosa, and was working on making himself more liked by Petunia, by casting cheering charms on Dudley so it looked like Dudley liked it when Harry was around. He almost always fell asleep after casting a spell, however, it tired him out so completely. He had worked up to casting one a day without passing out.

He practised making sounds at night, glad that the Dursley's didn't have a baby monitor. But then, Dudley had insanely strong lungs by the sounds of things, so it wasn't like they needed it. He practised moving, crawling, and walking too.

He was careful not to let Petunia or Vernon see or hear him. He knew that if he did things better than Dudley, they'd be angry.

The years passed slowly. But he made mental lists of things he wanted to achieve. He wanted to enjoy his childhood, and be prepared for Hogwarts, and the wizarding world. He would learn latin, and work really hard on his geography. He always regretted not having a good idea of where he was apparating.

He would work on maths, and english literature- Hermione had always had ideas that she claimed she picked straight out of books.

As soon as he was able he'd go to Diagon Alley and get books, a wand, and money. He wanted to eat well and not be the malnourished tiny child he'd been, and he could tell the way things were going that history was going to repeat itself unless he did something about it.

It was Dudley's third birthday when Vernon took Harry and locked him in the cupboard under the stairs, with an old duvet and pillow.

"He'll be fine there for the day while we take Dudders to the park and go for a meal out. He's been to the loo and we've not let him eat anything.."

The front door shut and locked behind them.

Harry was surprised at how elated he was to be left here. He looked around the cupboard, noticing the spiderwebs, and wandlessly cast alhomora on the door.

He methodically got dressed, and went out the back door. He was going to go to Mrs Figg's, and try to use her fireplace. She had always left the back door open for her cats before, she only got a cat flap just before he went to Hogwarts last time around.

Hopefully he'd be able to sneak past her.

He crossed the road carefully, wearing a hat. Harry knew he walked better than most three year olds, and he ran a little, hoping no one saw him as he scrabbled to undo the latch to Mrs Figg's back garden.

The cats were everywhere, as always, and he noticed, suspiciously, that many had characteristics like Crookshanks.

Mrs Figg wasn't in the living room, and he knew her floo powder was in the little cat container on the sideboard, he grabbed a handful fast as the cats started yowling, tossed and through the fumes spoke as clearly as he could.

"The Leaky Cauldron."


	4. Chapter 4

He landed on his rump in front of the fire, and suppressed the urge to cry. Choosing not to dust himself off, as the large hand-me-downs looked almost robe-like under soot, he walked purposefully out the door that led to the alley. He knew better than to sneak, as long as he looked like what he was doing was normal, no one would pay attention to him.

The wall opened only a few minutes after he got there, from the Alley side, he waited behind a dustbin as the middle aged witches walked on, and slipped through, feeling confidant that they were oblivious to his presence.

He kept his head down and walked, and was standing right in front of a clerk in Gringotts when he realised the huge flaw in this whole plan.

He didn't have his key.

He was three years old.

There was no way he would be able to get money out.

Plus, he couldn't see over the desk.

But he had to try.

Harry jumped, and clung onto edge, and, scrabling with his feet, pulled himself up so he was kneeling on the desk.

The goblin stared at him in undisguised disgust.

"I'm really sorry, sir. I just couldn't see over." Harry wondered how Flitwick managed, or other goblins, for that matter.

"Well, what do you want?" The goblin asked abruptly, after blinking, and smoothing the emotion off his face in a manoeuvre that looked painful.

"I was wanting to take money out of my vault, but I don't have the key."Harry realised that his vocabulary was rather advanced for a three year old, but thought it probably counted for him rather than against.

The goblin looked him up and down. "You have a vault, here? Under what name?"

"I'm Harry Potter." Harry whispered, having glanced around himself. No one seemed too close.

The goblin looked unconvinced, and Harry was impressed to notice he didn't look up at his forehead once.

"A drop of blood can verify that." He said, scorn evident. He flourished a piece of parchment and what looked like a fountain pen out of his desk. A blood quill, Harry presumed, and, studiously avoiding the goblin's eyes, he made a small mark on the paper, and winced, even though he had expected the cut on his hand.

The goblin wrote something on the paper in a different quill, and a few seconds later, the paper turned green.

The goblin's eyebrows rose, and he looked at Harry quickly.

He looked down again, and Harry's eyes followed, noticing that a gold key had appeared on top of the paper.

"Mr Potter, then. I am surprised to see you here. Alone."

"I would like to change some galleons to pounds when I have taken some out, is that possible?"

"Yes Mr Potter, the exchange rate is 5 pounds to a galleon. How much would you like to change?"

Harry thought about it. He would probably not be able to get to Gringotts for a very long time, safely. Five hundred pounds seemed a lot, but if he spent just a pound a day, it would still only last around two years maximum. He could get food. He would need books too, and a wand. "I'd like to change 100 galleons."

"It will be ready when you get back here. Nipgold will take you down, and take the galleons from you."

Harry realised, walking after Nipgold, that the goblins really didn't care that he was three. It was his money, as far as they were concerned. He liked that about them.

The carts were as amazing as always, and Harry swore, once again, that he had seen the dragon. He hopped jauntily onto the rock in front of his vault, and thanked the goblin. "Can it go faster?" he asked.

The goblin smiled, nodding as the door vanished.

"Cool."

Harry headed to the back of his vault, where he knew a weightless bottomless bag, like the one Hermione had once enchanted, was hidden. It was shaped like a carpet bag, with a blue paisley pattern, but Harry figured the wizarding world had seen stranger things, and he would go through the hedges to get back to Privet Drive. Maybe even get the Knight bus to drop him off right behind it.

Harry also found, on the back wall of the vault, which seemed to be at least twice the length of the great hall away from the vault entrance, a rack filled with wands. They were piled up on top of each other, and Harry started grabbing them at random, putting discarded wands into a large vase on the floor next to it. He wished they were better organised.

He wished he could go buy a wand, but any wand sold had tracking charms on it for underage magic, and although he knew he wouldn't be in trouble for doing magic, he preferred to not let anyone know.

He had tried maybe 5 or 6 when he found one that gave off a burst of sparks. They weren't the glorious gold and red shower he'd had with his own wand, but a silver stream.

He cast wingardium leviosa on the wands he'd dumped into the vase and scooped them back into the rack.

This would do.

On the way back to the front of the vault, he picked up a few books and laid them down again. They seemed valuable, old and fragile. Hermione had read them, he knew, and said they were useful.

He was more concerned with relearning the basics again, and being as broadly prepared as possible. He would read them, just not now.

He counted out a hundred galleons to give to Nipgold, and then gathered a pile for books today, and the Knightbus, and, just in case he could, owl orders. He might be able to arrange the delivery to come at a certain time.

The journey up was a blur- the cart really could go faster, not one speed only, like Griphook had told Hagrid. But then, Hagrid probably wouldn't have wanted to go faster.

The goblin clerk had the pounds all ready, and Harry headed for Flourish and Blotts after saying thank you. He grabbed the first and second year books, and feeling worried for the time, almost ran through the alley, then the Leaky Cauldron. The Knightbus was almost empty, and Harry reached Marigold Lane- the little walking path behind the Dursley's, very quickly.

He locked himself in the cupboard and pushed the bag to the back, under the duvet, when he heard the key in the lock.

His stomach rumbled loudly.

Just in time.


End file.
